A man blew himself up in front of a seaside hotel in Tunisia today, in what is believed to be the first suicide bombing in the country.

Witnesses said he had tried to enter the Riadh Palm hotel - which is popular with British tourists - in Sousse about
90 miles south of the capital, Tunis, but was blocked by security staff. He is believed to have then detonated his bomb.

No one else was hurt, according to the Interior Ministry.

Tunisia had largely avoided violence, but since the country kicked off the Arab Spring by overthrowing its long-ruling secular dictatorship, it has been battered by a rising Islamist insurgency in remote parts of the country.

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT. Scroll down for video

Police officers carry the body of a suicide bomber from the crime scene at a beach near the tourist resort of Sousse

A forensic unit inspects the scene where the suicide bomber blew himself up

The violence is the first in a tourist area and raises fears for the country's already troubled tourism industry.

The Interior Ministry said that no one else was injured and no property was damaged. It said the bomber was a Tunisian man wearing an explosive belt.

Police also arrested a man carrying explosives near the mausoleum of Habib Bourguiba, the country's first post-independence president, in the nearby city of Monastir, ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Aroui told a local radio station.

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Both men appeared to belong to an extremist group, he said.

Sousse has long been a major destination for European tourism, a sector that was just now recovering from a catastrophic drop following the country's 2011 revolution when holidaymakers stayed away amid the unrest.

A security vacuum opened up and many
long-repressed hardline Islamic groups appeared, some of whom armed
themselves with weapons from civil war-wracked Libya to the east.

The corpse of the suicide bomber lies on the beach near the tourist resort, surrounded by sun loungers and shades that are rented to tourists

A man blew himself up in front of the Riadh Palm seaside hotel in Sousse, Tunisia today (file picture). No one else was injured. It is believed to be the first suicide bombing in the country

After tolerating hardline groups such as Ansar al-Shariah, the moderate Islamist government banned them in September and began arresting members.

In the past year, clashes have erupted in remote areas as authorities discovered militant hideouts.

Most recently, six National Guardsmen were killed when they surrounded a house in the impoverished interior province of Sidi Bouzid and a policeman was killed in the northern town of Beja last week.

There are also frequent clashes with what are described as Al Qaeda-linked jihadists holed up in mountains along the Algerian border.

In February and July, prominent left-wing politicians were shot dead in front of their homes by alleged jihadists.

The Sousse attack, however, appears to be the first attempt at a mass civilian casualty bombing.

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Since the 2011 uprising, Islamists have pressed for strict Sharia law to be imposed in one of the Muslim world's most secular countries, which has strong ties to Europe.

Oppressed and jailed under Ben Ali, conservative Salafists - followers of a puritanical strain of Sunni Islam - have had more freedom to express their fundamentalist views since 2011.

But violent, hardline Islamists have also attacked alcohol sellers, art shows and theatre plays they say are against Islam, and have taken over mosques.

The rise to power of an elected Islamist-led government has fuelled fears of many secular Tunisians that women's rights and liberal educational traditions may be eroded.

The ruling Ennahda party says even ultra-orthodox Islamist views must be accommodated in Tunisia's fledgling democracy, but that there is no place for armed militants.

Authorities say the militants have acquired weapons and training in neighbouring Libya, where the central government has failed to impose order since the 2011 fall of Muammar Gaddafi.

Ennahda accused Ansar al-Sharia militants of being behind the assassination of two secular opposition leaders this year.

Those attacks set off months of protests from opposition supporters who said Ennahda had been too lenient on hardline Islamists. Ennahda has agreed to step down within the next three weeks to end the unrest and allow a caretaker government to govern until elections.

Ansar al-Sharia was also blamed for inciting an attack on the U.S. embassy a year ago, when Islamist protesters stormed the building. The group's leader is a former Al Qaeda veteran who once fought in Afghanistan.

Nine Tunisian policemen were killed in clashes with militants earlier this month in two different cities.